Paladin builds
Paladin builds can be either Holy, Protection, or Retribution. Holy leans towards healing, Protection leans towards tanking, and Retribution leans towards melee DPS. Instructions to WoWWiki editors: In order to keep this page precise and concise, please do not add complete builds here. For those who are interested in contributing their own builds, please add them to Paladin build samples. Any complete builds found on this page will be moved to Paladin build samples. Holy With good healing gear, paladins of any spec can provide reasonable healing. However, for those who are dedicated to becoming a main healer in PvE and PvP, you need to go deeper into the Holy tree. There is also a special type of Holy paladin, the shockadins, who are capable of doing a good amount of Holy damage in PvP. However, with the excellent performance of retribution paladins in PvP now, few people would spec shockadin builds anymore. PvE Healing Build Paladin healers, or healadins, are well-known for mana-efficiency. Illumination is the major reason for this and no good healing specs can do without it. Otherwise, the talent points of the paladin healers are not as tight as those of the paladin tanks or DPS, so you can easily find a lot of viable healing builds out there. Nevertheless, the majority of people would agree that these are the core talents of PvE healadins: Divine Intellect, Spiritual Focus, Healing Light, Illumination, Sanctified Light, Holy Power, Light's Grace, Holy Guidance and Divine Illumination. Other optional but good-to-have talents include Improved Blessing of Wisdom, Improved Lay on Hands, Blessed Life and Divine Favor. So a basic healing build would look more or less like this: Basic PvE Healing Build (41/0/0) The rest of the points can go to other useful talents in the Holy tree, as well as Protection or Retribution trees as you see fit. It is common for healadins to pick up Blessing of Kings and/or Improved Blessing of Might for the benefit of other raid members. PvP Healing Build In the cutthroat environment of PvP, being mana-efficient is not as important. Rather, having high survivability while providing good healing to teammates becomes the top priority. Being able to wear plate armor as well as having various self-protection abilities make paladins good candidates for PvP healers. Talents that are useful for PvP healadins include Spiritual Focus, Unyielding Faith, Pure of Heart, Holy Shock and Blessed Life. Guardian's Favor, Blessing of Kings, Improved Concentration Aura, Stoicism, and Improved Hammer of Justice are some good PvP talents in the Protection tree that you should also consider. Basic PvP Healing Build (36/0/0) Shockadin Build Getting gear with spell critical strike rating improves this build's DPS, as it focuses on Holy Shock and Seal/Judgement of Righteousness for DPS while still being able to adequately support a team with healing and debuffing. Compared to Retribution builds, the DPS is relatively weak, though the ability to heal remains intact, even in raids and PvP encounters. Basic Shockadin Build (40/0/0) Many shockadin's will go with a build that includes some important Retribution talents to further boost the holy damage they dish out. Protection Paladins are one of the three classes in the game that can be adapted to absorb damage like a sponge and keep others from harm. They are particularly famous for the ability to tank multiple (10+) mobs at the same time. Besides, Paladins are also well known for their ability to survive with their unique combination of invulnerability, plate armor and healing spells, which makes them very good for AoE farming. Wrath of the Lich King PvE Tanking Build For those who want to tank in 5-man instances or raid, investing heavily into protection tree is advised. Since patch 3.0.2, there are less useful talents than points to spend at level 80, so we see a lot of tanking builds with some minor variation here and there. However, the following talents can be considered as the most important at level 80: * 5/5 Divine Strength - Increases your total Strength by 15%. Threat-improving talent. * 5/5 Anticipation - Increases your chance to dodge by 5%. Survivability talent. * 5/5 Toughness - Increases your armor value from items by 2% and reduces the duration of all movement slowing effects by 6%. Survivability talent. * 3/3 Improved Righteous Fury - While Righteous Fury is active, all damage taken is reduced by 6%. Survivability talent. * 1/1 Blessing of Sanctuary - Places a Blessing on the friendly target, reducing damage taken from all sources by 3% for 10 min. In addition, when the target blocks, parries, or dodges a melee attack the target will gain 10 rage, 20 runic power, or 2% of maximum mana. Players may only have one Blessing on them per Paladin at any one time. The tankadins' main mana source. * 2/2 Sacred Duty - Increases your total Stamina by 6%, reduces the cooldown of your Divine Shield and Divine Protection spells by 60 sec and reduces the attack speed penalty by 100%. Survivability talent. * 5/5 One-Handed Weapon Specialization - Increases all damage you deal when a one-handed melee weapon is equipped by 10%. Threat-improving talent. * 1/1 Holy Shield - Increases chance to block by 30% for 10 sec and deals 211 Holy damage for each attack blocked while active. Each block expends a charge. 8 charges. Survivability, threat-improving and mana-generating talent. * 5/5 Ardent Defender - When you have less than 35% health, all damage taken is reduced by 30%. Survivability talent. * 3/3 Redoubt - Increases your block value by 30% and damaging melee and ranged attacks against you have a 10% chance to increase your chance to block by 30%. Lasts 10 sec or 5 blocks. Survivability and (with Holy Shield) threat-improving talent. * 3/3 Combat Expertise - Increases your expertise by 6, total Stamina and chance to critically hit by 6%. Survivability and threat-improving talent. * 3/3 Touched by the Light - Increases your spell power by an amount equal to 30% of your Stamina and increases the amount healed by your critical heals by 30%. Threat-improving talent. * 5/5 Avenger's Shield - Hurls a holy shield at the enemy, dealing + 0.07 * SPH + 0.07 * AP to + 0.07 * SPH + 0.07 * AP Holy damage, Dazing them and then jumping to additional nearby enemies. Affects 3 total targets. Lasts 10 sec. Threat-improving talent. * 2/2 Guarded by the Light - Reduces spell damage taken by 6% and reduces the mana cost of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 30%. Survivability and mana-saving talent. * 3/3 Shield of the Templar - Increases the damage of your Holy Shield, Avenger's Shield and Shield of Righteousness spells by 30%. Threat-improving talent. * 2/2 Judgements of the Just - Your Judgement spells also reduce the melee attack speed of the target by 20%. Survivability talent. * 1/1 Hammer of the Righteous - Hammer the current target and up to 2 additional nearby targets, causing 4 times your main hand damage per second as Holy damage. Threat-improving talent. This spell applys the current seal to all three targets! * 5/5 Deflection (Retribution) - Increases your Parry chance by 5%. Survivability talent (with a minimum of threat-improvement). * 1/2 Improved Judgements (Retribution) - Decreases the cooldown of your Judgement spells by 1 sec. A judgement cooldown of 9 seconds is optimal for finding your personal spell rotation, as all important spells have a cooldown of 6 or 9 seconds. Common gap-filling talents skilled are: * Stoicism - Reduced the duration of all Stun effects by an additional 10/20/30% and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by an additional 10/20/30%. The main use of this talent is PvP, but if you do not want to talent Blessing of Kings, this can be used as gap-filler. * Reckoning - Gives you a 10% chance after blocking or being hit by any damaging attack that the next 4 weapon swings within 8 sec will generate an additional attack. Mostly useful for leveling and AoE farming. The last few points can be added to other useful talents, such as Blessing of Kings, Heart of the Crusader, Improved Devotion Aura, Pursuit of Justice or Seals of the Pure. So a basic tanking build would look something like: Basic Tanking Build (0/56/6) with 9 points free to spend. Blessing of Kings is chosen here as gap-filler. Common pitfalls: *Improved Hammer of Justice is an excellent talent for PvP. However, when you are the tank in instances, you can rarely find use for Hammer of Justice. Most bosses are immune to stun. Besides, most of the time you do not want to stun the trash mobs because getting hit helps threat generation. *Similarly, Guardian's Favor is very useful in PvP but a waste of talent points for tanks. *Reckoning is good for leveling and AoE farming but its contribution when main-tanking is minimal. *Seal of Command is NOT a good seal for tanking because its damage is proportional to the physical damage of the weapon. However, some Alliance protection paladins may still want it because, for only one talent point, it helps a lot at single target dps, which maybe needed when soloing, PvPing or off-tanking. Horde paladins can certainly skip it as Blood Elves' Seal of Blood is as good if not better for such tasks. *While Improved Devotion Aura offers some extra armor that may help during leveling, raiding tankadins normally do not benefit much from it because its armor bonus does not scale with gear. By the time a tankadin is geared enough for raid, the armor bonus from this talent is already negligible. *Improved Blessing of Might is only worth the points for tankadins when you buff it to your group/raid members - you will mostly buff yourself with Blessing of Sanctuary. *Vindication may look wonderful at first. Unfortunately, most of the mobs (especially bosses) are immune to it. PvP Protection Build Protection Paladins have their advantages and disadvantages in PvP. They are by no means a raw DPS spec, there still are many ways to be useful in battleground based PvP. Most of the damage of protection paladins depends on reflective damage, which allows them to win easily against rogues, warriors, other paladins, and enhancement shamans. The disadvantages is, melee players have the option to retreat; however this may benefit the paladin if he is defending a specific location. Against casters or hunters, the chance to win is reduced. Protection paladins are effective at tanking (multiple) bosses in Alterac Valley, holding the flag in Warsong Gulch or Eye of the Storm (because of their high survivability and Blessing of Freedom), or defending bases in Arathi Basin and Alterac Valley. AOE / Grinding builds with WOTLK talents Aside from Mages, Paladins have the highest potential for AoE grinding, combining their incredible survivability against melee attacks with talent procs that occur when they are the victim of enemy attacks. This build is mainly viable against melee targets, preferably those that do not run or use magic/ranged attacks. To make this spec viable, Holy Shield must be obtained. A shield spike, and any other item that causes damage when struck or extra weapon swings, would be very useful as well. Paladins spec'd this way can singlehandedly take out 5-6 mobs (easily up to 10+ at level 70 with good gear) or 2-3 elites of equal level, and often end up with full health and mana, due to Seal/Judgement of Light/Wisdom. Before level 30 and getting Blessing of Sanctuary it is much easier to level as retribution. At level 30 you can respec into protection and start AOE grind. You will need a shield, a fast weapon and a good shield spike. The goal is to get hit by a lot of mobs. Always have Blessing of Sanctuary running before you pull. You can Aggro multiple mobs with either your warhorse or with Avenger's Shield. After the mobs surround you cast and refresh Consecration as AOE. Apply Seal of Light to a target. Where cool down is available apply either Judgement of Wisdom or Judgement of Light depends on if you are low on health or low on mana. The new judgement system allows to use different judgements without releasing the original seal. Your blessing should return you mana while your seal should return you health. If you have a runner you can stop it by either using Judgement of Justice or Hammer of Justice. If your health is dropping faster than it can be replenished you can bubble up and heal. In case of emergency don't forget to use mana pots or Lay on Hands. Minimalist AOE Grind Build Leveling as Protection It is not advised to start a Paladin off in the Protection tree. However, once the Paladin can cast and judge the Seal of Light at level 30, it is truly possible to level as a Protection paladin by AoE grinding and enjoy it. Before level 30, put all the points in Retribution tree. Once you are ready for leveling by AOE grinding at level 30 to 40, respec at any class trainer and put all your point into Protection: At level 30: 5/5 Redoubt, 3/3 Precision, 2/5 Toughness, 3/3 Improved Righteous Fury, 3/3 Shield Specialization, 4/5 Anticipation, 1/1 Blessing of Sanctuary Level 31-35: 5/5 Reckoning Level 36-37: 2/2 Sacred Duty Level 38: 3/5 Toughness Level 39: 5/5 Anticipation Level 40: 1/1 Holy Shield Level 41-42: 2/2 Improved Holy Shield As you may see, this comes up to the core AoE farming talent. You can spend the remaining talent points as you like. Retribution Retribution Paladins are excellent offenders in PvP, as well as very good DPS in PvE since the major retribution buffing in patch 2.3.0. The instrinsic high survivability of paladins coupled with the potential of high burst damage provided by the Retribution tree make them capable of disposing almost any classes one on one and valuable both in dealing and absorbing damage in group PvP. In PvE, besides the high damage output, they also provide various useful utilities to their party members. PvE Retribution Build For those who want to play as damage dealers in instances/raids, the top priorties are doing high substantial damage output and controlling threat. Talents that can provide benefits to other party members are also very helpful in raid progression, so should be emphasized as well. The core talents that helps to ensure high and continuous damage output include Benediction, Improved Judgement, Conviction, Crusade, Two-Handed Weapon Specialization, Vengeance, Sanctified Judgement, Sanctified Seals, Fanaticism, Crusader Strike and Divine Strength. Fanaticism is also the one and only one threat controlling talent that enable the retribution paladin to get past the threat-limited dps threshold in the past. Improved Seal of the Crusader and Improved Sanctity Aura provide solid increase for retribution paladins as well as other party members' damage output and therefore are usually maxed as well. Seal of Command is a must for Alliance paladins as it is the seal they would use most of the time. For Horde players, some would skip it because Blood Elves' Seal of Blood is at least as good, or even better. The basic PvE retribution paladin build would look like: Basic PvE Retribution DPS Build Many retribution paladins would spend eight of the remaining points into the Protection tree to get 3/3 Precision. Precision lowers the amount of hit rating needed from 142 to 95 to hit a level 73 boss 100% of the time. After that it is really up to you. Common pitfalls: *Vindication may look wonderful at first. Unfortunately, most of the mobs (especially bosses) are immune to it. However, one point into it will make it proc Judgment of Wisdom even though the mob is immune to it, so it is worth putting one point in for PVE builds. *While Improved Blessing of Might may have some value during leveling or when the gear is not very good yet, it is generally not worth spending five talent points to max it for a raiding retribution paladin. If you are the only paladin in the raid, Blessing of Salvation provides better improvement in DPS. Even if you get Salvation from someone else and can cast Might on yourself, 5/5 Improved Blessing of Might only provide you 44 more attack power than the regular version. Get it only if you are always the one assigned to give Might and there are always like three or more people benefit from it. PvP Retribution Build While most of the core talents of a PvE Retribution Build is still useful in PvP, PvP retribution paladins need several more talents to enhance their survivability from enemy players and help to defeat them. These include Vindication, Repentance and Pursuit of Justice in the Retribution tree. (Although PvE retribution paladins normally also have Repentance, it is only needed for them to get Fanaticism. However, it is a MUST for PvP retribution paladins by itself, no matter you are going to get Fanaticism or not.) Sanctified Seals is also important to ensure your Seal cannot be dispelled, besides providing you the extra damage. Like PvE, every Alliance retribution paladin should use Seal of Command. However, Horde players would probably better get it as well even if you may still use Seal of Blood as the primary Seal, as Seal of Blood backfire damage is not something you want when you are low on health and mana during PvP. There are several other useful PvP talents in Protection tree including Guardian's Favor, Blessing of Kings, Stoicism and Improved Hammer of Justice, so it is not infrequent to see PvP retribution paladins spending up to 20 points in Protection tree. Basic PvP Retribution Build (at least 5 more points should be added in retribution tree to get Crusader Strike, but the exact distribution of the points is up to personal preference.) Leveling as Retribution Retribution (with patch 3.0.2) has become a very powerful leveling spec, all the way to 70. When leveling as Retribution, using a two-hand weapon and dealing with one mob a time is recommended. Below is an efficient talent build for leveling your character: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZ0xZVf0tbIhcMsguAo Level 10-14: 5/5 Benediction Level 15-16: 2/2 Improved Judgement Level 17-19: 3/3 Heart of the Crusader Level 20: 1/1 Seal of Command Level 21-25: 5/5 Conviction Level 26-27: 2/2 Pursuit of Justice Level 28-30: 3/3 Sanctified Seals Level 31-33: 3/3 Two-Handed Weapon Specialization Level 34-36: 3/3 Crusade Level 37-39: 3/3 Vengeance Level 40: 1/1 Repentance Level 41-42: 2/2 The Art of War Level 43-45: 3/3 Judgements of the Wise Level 46-49: 4/5 Fanaticism Level 50: 1/1 Crusader Strike Level 51: 5/5 Fanaticism Level 52-54: 3/3 Sheath of Light Level 55-59: 5/5 Righteous Vengeance Level 60: 1/1 Divine Storm Level 61-62: 2/2 Sanctified Wrath Level 63-65: 3/3 Swift Retribution Level 66-70: 5/5 Divine Strength (Protection Tree) Level 80 Builds :Until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is actually released, all talent info is subject to change, especially over level 70. Protection *http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaeVA0zMteIRGogsb Retribution *http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=sZaxZVfrt0IucrsguAo (Snowlord of Thrall) See also *Paladin build samples: Contains WoWWiki users submitted complete paladin builds *Popular Tankadin Specs: A list of some popular tankadin builds at Maintankadin *AOE/Grinding build for WOTLK: An example of AOE paladin build with updated WOTLK talents Category:Guides Category:Paladins Category:Talents Category:Paladin talents